Now in its 10th year, the Unruly Sounds Music Festival returns to Hinds Plaza in Princeton on Saturday, Oct. 3, to present an array of original music.
You might hear a touch of electronica, a samba-flavored percussion jam, world music or someone playing the marimba with spatulas. The only thing to expect is the unexpected.
The festival, as in previous years, is sponsored by Princeton University’s Princeton Sound Kitchen, the Princeton Public Library, Jazams, Labyrinth Books, Princeton Record Exchange and Small World Coffee.
Curated by Mika Godbole of Mantra Percussion, Unruly Sounds brings together local musicians and composers, area bands and emerging talents from Princeton University’s graduate composition program. The lineup spans post-classical, contemporary and experimental music, showcasing the range of original music being created in and around Princeton.
The festival was founded by Godbole with the idea of bringing new music out of the sometimes stuffy concert hall and into the community, creating an open, relaxed space where musicians, composers and audiences can discover something new together.
This is not your typical music fest. Concertgoers can come and go to grab something to eat, meet friends, bring a book, wander through the plaza or settle in and listen. Dancing and an open mind are both encouraged.
Unruly Sounds seems to have an especially international flair this year, including Nava Dunkelman, a percussionist and improviser based in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Tokyo, Japan, and raised in a multicultural environment by an American father and Indonesian mother, her musical approach is innovative and dynamic, combining virtuosity and intuition.
People of Earth, or PoE, is a global music collective that has emerged as one of the United States’ most exciting Latin and tropical bands. With an electrifying blend of music from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil and beyond, PoE delivers a high-energy experience that transcends borders.
This 12-piece supergroup features a dynamic lineup of world-class musicians hailing from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Canada, Switzerland, Haiti, Greece and more. Together, they create a sound that is as diverse as it is powerful.
jujubi was formed in the summer of 2025 after its members met at an electronic music composition festival in Kalamazoo. Chloe Liuyan is a synth player and composer from Chengdu, China. Gian Torrano Jacobs is an interdisciplinary artist from Princeton. Their mission is to bring wonky, meaningful music to the masses, have fun and make friends while doing it.
Composer, saxophonist, electronic music producer and educator Anna Meadors’ music is inspired by nature walks and small details, birds, slightly uneven pulses, the buzzy stillness of bodies of water and joyful improvisation.
She is the interim assistant director of Columbia University’s Computer Music Center and a lecturer in electronic music composition and production in Columbia’s Music Department. Meadors recently finished her Ph.D. in music composition at Princeton University.
Kennedy Taylor Dixon is a composer, violist, vocalist and improviser whose work explores repetition, intimacy, texture and the physicality of sound. Her practice moves between composed and improvised music, often bringing together acoustic performance, voice, extended technique and electronic processing.
Dixon has performed at Lincoln Center with Second Ending Ensemble and composed for a variety of ensembles and organizations, such as JACK Quartet, Young Dancemakers Company and Castle of our Skins.
What began as backyard jam sessions among friends has grown into a joyful community gathering. Samb’in Princeton is Princeton’s first roda de samba, where musicians play around a shared table and everyone is invited to sing, clap, dance and celebrate together.
Payton MacDonald is a percussionist who works across a wide range of musical disciplines and is a founding member of Alarm Will Sound, a new-music chamber orchestra. The group is regarded as one of the foremost new-music ensembles in the country, with multiple recordings and performances around the globe.
There are a handful of innovative first-time performers appearing this year, including Gladstone Deluxe (Gladstone Butler), a New York-based artist working with percussion and electronics and a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton.
As a percussionist, Gladstone is interested in how conceptions and politics of time are embodied and can bleed into the social topography of a culture through rhythmic performance. As a technologist, he develops systems for the augmentation and amplification of percussive messages. His experimental approach to composition and interface design is a collision of the spiritual and the cybernetic.
Unruly Sounds welcomes Lebanese-born composer, vocalist and violinist Layale Chaker, who will present her music in a trio setting with Kyle Sanna on guitar and Aaron Edgcomb on drums, drawing on classical Arabic poetic meters, oral and free forms through the lens of contemporary maqam, jazz and free improvisation.
Also new to the festival this year is Tyler Eschendal, a composer, percussionist and videographer, as well as a Ph.D. candidate in composition at Princeton University. At the core of his work are topics like speech, stuttering and (dis)fluency, which are often explored through short film and live theater.
As a composer, Eschendal’s music has been performed at institutions across the United States and abroad, and he has worked with such ensembles as So percussion, Shattered Glass, Grand Rapids Symphony and the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet.
Future projects include a collaboration with So percussion, new work for Alarm Will Sound and a solo music-theater work premiering in November 2026.
U.S. 1 reached out to Eschendal for an interview ahead of his performance at the Unruly Sounds Music Festival.
U.S. 1: How did you connect with the Unruly Sounds Music Festival?
Tyler Eschendal: I’ve known Mika (Godbole) through the percussion community for a number of years, but first encountered the festival last year when some colleagues at Princeton were performing. Mika kindly invited me to participate this year. This is my first time performing at the festival.
U.S. 1: Do you know what you’ll be playing?
TE: I’m doing a solo work called “Acting” from a larger series called “Actions” from 2023. I’ll be drumming on ceramic tiles, as well as speaking while playing.
U.S. 1: Like So percussion, you play on the most unusual things, like tiles. Where do you get ideas like this?
TE: As a percussionist, I’m always looking for unique sounds. When I was originally writing the work, I was really struck by the resonance and variety of sounds that ceramic tiles produce. They’re not often performed on or written for, so it felt like fresh territory to work with.
U.S. 1: I see you are creating a work to present with So percussion next year.
TE: So co-teaches a class at Princeton about percussion writing. I took this class in the spring and will be presenting a new work with them in May 2027 that is heavily inspired by the Foley process in filmmaking, where everyday sounds, like shoes walking or clothes rustling, are rerecorded and overdubbed in post-production. will essentially be doing this process live, responding to and miming my actions and movements, ultimately creating a cross between a score and a radio play.
U.S. 1: You work with stuttering and disfluency, what we might call “hemming and hawing.” But it’s all percussive, if you think about it.
TE: Speech rhythm and the musicality of speech and stuttering have been both a lifelong obsession as a person who stutters and a catalyst for composition and performance for the last few years. The unique noises, blocks, repetitions and contours of everyday speech provide a never-ending palette of rhythms and sounds to explore.
U.S. 1: As a composer, have you always been experimenting with sound?
TE: For the last few years I’ve been exploring the musicality of speech and stuttering, particularly how I speak and stutter. I use speech rhythm and stuttering as a frame to explore bigger topics of anxiety, fluency and acceptance, often through theatrical performance and short film. Percussion is my primary toolkit, so inviting rhythm and physicality to the music comes most naturally during the writing process.
U.S. 1: Tell me about your influences.
TE: Many of my influences come from other art forms, like stand-up and improvised comedy. These formats experiment with language, intonation and delivery of speech, as well as structures and forms that flow in unique and often spontaneous ways. And there are some incredible musicians — people who stutter — making unique and compelling music, like JJJJJerome Ellis and Luke Wyland.
U.S. 1: You’re originally from Ohio, with an undergraduate degree from the University of Cincinnati, and you have your master’s from the University of Southern California. What drew you here?
TE: Princeton University has a unique history of composer-performers, which, for me, was a part of the appeal of coming here to continue developing and refining my practice.
Tyler Eschendal is among the musicians, composers and ensembles who will perform at the 10th annual Unruly Sounds Music Festival, Saturday, Oct. 3, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Hinds Plaza, adjacent to the Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon St., Princeton. Free and open to the public. In case of rain, the festival will move inside to the Community Room. 609-924-9529. princetonlibrary.libnet.info.